Western Australia to Get 65% Royalty from Browse FLNG Project

The Australian government has signed an agreement to give Western Australia (WA) almost 66 percent royalties of Woodside’s Browse FLNG project.

Federal Minister for Industry and Science, Ian Macfarlane, and Western Australian Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Bill Marmion, on Tuesday executed a deed of agreement setting out the proportion of petroleum in the Torosa petroleum pool.

The Torosa petroleum pool straddles Commonwealth and WA retention lease areas and is intended to be developed through the proposed Browse floating LNG (FLNG) project.

"This deed of agreement represents an allocation of petroleum between the Commonwealth (34.6 percent) and the State of Western Australia (65.4 percent) based on the best available technical data. It will provide certainty to the Browse Joint Venture over the life of the project, reinforcing Australia's reputation as a stable investment destination,” Macfarlane said.

The deed of agreement and the Commonwealth and WA Governments' recent renewal of the Browse retention leases contributed to the Joint Venture's decision to enter into the front-end engineering and design (FEED) phase announced on July 1, 2015, government of WA said in statement.

Macfarlane said the Browse Joint Venture was scheduled to make its final investment decision on the proposed project late next year.